[ Newsbits ] March 26, 2014

March 25th, 2014 by Benj Edwards

VC&G Newsbits Logo

Hi, Benj here. People send me stuff all the time hoping I’ll post something about it on VC&G, but each item alone rarely warrants its own post. There is a solution: a regular compressed news and links column. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for, well, almost 9 years now.

So I finally got around to it. (Just in time for blogs to become thoroughly obsolete, natch.) Newsbits could become a weekly thing, or I’ll just post them as news collects. I’ll feel it out as I go along.

News & Links

  • Vintage Computer Festival East 9.1
    April 4-6, 2014, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, New Jersey

    “Vintage Computer Festival East is a hands-on, family-friendly celebration of computer history. Activities include a book sale, classes, consignment sale, exhibit hall, food, lectures, museum tours, prizes, vendors, workshops, and more. (Why “9.1”? We skipped 9.0 in 2013 due to damage from Hurricane Sandy.)

  • Second Edition of “Atari, Inc.” Possible
    Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel are working on a second, revised edition of the epic Atari history book they released in 2012. More info as it comes along.
  • Surfing Modern Web With Ancient Browsers
    Awesome technique renders pages as image-mapped GIFs.

    “Webrender.py came to life. It’s a cgi-bin application that resides on a machine in the middle. It renders a gif image and spits it out to the browser together with a simple web page, containing a URL and search input boxes plus the gif and image map.

  • The Temple Operating System
    The demo video for this Judeo-Christian-inspired homemade operating system will blow your mind. (via Antoni Sawicki)

    “TempleOS is an x86_64, multi-tasking, multi-cored, public domain, open source, ring-0-only, single-address-map (identity mapped), non-networked, PC operating system for recreational programming. I capped the lines of code at 100,000, so it will never be an ugly monstrosity. Currently, it is 81,489. Since God’s temple must be perfect and we have 1,000 years in mind, I do not promise that anything is future-proof.

Echo Box

Here are some products, creative works, and upcoming projects seeking support. No endorsement from VC&G is implied.

  • Nova Phase
    A downloadable comic book with NES-style pixel art graphics.
  • donkulous DONKEYS (iTunes Link)
    “We’ve just released a new free iOS game, donkulous DONKEYS. It’s an unapologetically hard but insanely addictive retro arcade game, inspired by Bill Gates’ first one-and-only DOS game.
  • Armiga Project on Indiegogo
    “Wouldn’t it be great to be able to use all those aging Amiga disks again? Maybe the original Amiga is a bit big and video quality not so good… A smaller version, with modern connections would be awesome, isn’t it? That’s what we’ve done: take modern technology and make it work with good old floppies.

Submit News

If you want me to include something on a future Newsbits column, send me an email with “[Newsbits]” in the subject line. My email filter will route it directly into my brain.



8 Responses to “[ Newsbits ] March 26, 2014”

  1. Philip Says:

    Newsbits is a nice idea. Thanks!

  2. Brent Yandell Says:

    Great idea, I like it!

  3. Benj Edwards Says:

    Thanks for the feedback, guys. Glad you like it.

  4. Alexander Says:

    I can dig it.

  5. technotreegrass Says:

    Loving it.

  6. Geoff V. Says:

    Love the concept and the content Benj!

  7. arlandi Says:

    keep em coming Benj!! awesome!

  8. Benj Edwards Says:

    Awesome! Send me some links.

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